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Things

Hello, readers.

Here are things making me happy this week in no particular order except the one I wrote them in.

1) Bo Burnham. what. The stand-up of the YouTube-I don’t have time to finish this sentence because there’s a picture of a cat I need to write a poem about in which god doesn’t care about me or you and my emotions always get the better of me but I’m still gonna try because-generation. It’s fantabulism and surrealism and pop songs done with all the heart one could ask for in a performance that includes air guitar, air harpsichord, air cymbals, dis-embodied voices, masturbatory, orchestral, masturbations, and at least one murdered pentacorns (a unicorn with 5 horns). At some point, in some distant past, from somewhere, I saw the end of this performance on YouTube. And now, having seen the full show, I’m so excited it exists. Go watch it.

2) John Green. I know, I know, I’ve been talking about this all week, but Looking for Alaska is so damn committed to its characters and its emotions that it’s no wonder it spawned what has become the entity known as JOHN GREEN which now controls one-third of the interwebs. I do this thing sometimes when I read where I imagine criticisms of the thing I’m reading and then think of answers to those criticisms. Because I like arguing with myself, I guess, or maybe getting the jump on anyone who wants to argue with me. It leads to me sometimes talking in a way where people wonder if there presence is entirely necessary. The criticism I imagined people leveling at a book like Looking for Alaska is that it’s white kids at a boarding school and there’s a mysterious, crazy, magical girl and it reminds me of the stuff people said about Michael Chabon’s, A Model World and Mysteries of Pittsburgh. That the scope was too small, or the imagination not deep enough, or it was too romantic, too young, too naive. Well. I answered my inner critic by pointing out that all the best art comes from focusing on something, however big or small, until you can see the entire universe in it. Or. Well. The opposite. Douglas Adams focuses on the universe until you see yourself eating a sandwich. And, also, cricket. Also. Yeah. I like romance and death and finding the world inside curves of skin and falling leaves and it’s nice to pay attention to everything in all the things. Something like that. I like this book and the world is more awesome for it.

3) Tea. I received some gunpowder green tea from a lady and it is delicious.